


Out to Sea

by mimosa-supernova (FourCatProductions)



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Anal Sex, Biting, Choking, Consensual But Not Safe Or Sane, Dirty Talk, Face Slapping, Fenris's Inability to Deal, Light Bondage, M/M, Masochism, Mild Humiliation, Morning Sex, Possessive Sex, Referenced Past Trauma, References to Fenris's Past and All That Entails, Rimming, Sharing Fantasies with A Partner, Trust Kink, Under-negotiated Kink, Voice Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-04-22 23:54:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14319858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FourCatProductions/pseuds/mimosa-supernova
Summary: Hawke persuades Fenris to share a fantasy. It doesn't end well, until it does.





	Out to Sea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [linndechir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/gifts).



> Hello, SmutSwap friend! This is my first time writing for Dragon Age, so I can only hope I did your request and the characters justice. Enjoy, and thank you for the excellent prompts/inspiration.

There was Before, and there was After.

Fenris hated thinking about Before – before his escape, before Kirkwall, before _Hawke_ – but Before was permanently etched into his skin, and he worried at it like a loose tooth. After was still new, and he wasn’t sure he could trust it yet. It had been a year since Danarius had come to claim him, only to meet his demise at the hands of his former slave. Fenris could still feel his heart at times. Could close his eyes and call it to mind like it was yesterday, slick and oily, the blackened weight of it beating against his palm.

“I was surprised he still had a heart for you to crush,” Hawke had said afterwards, because he was Hawke and that was just what he did, making jokes around what he really wanted to say. Fenris didn’t mind. It was better than pity.

*****

They’d tried it once, him and Hawke, before Hadriana came. _You’re mad,_ Fenris had told himself more than once, even as his gaze lingered too long and his fingers itched to comb through Hawke’s beard, cup his neck, strip him bare; had he really escaped one mage, only to fall directly into the arms of another?

Hawke wasn’t like the magisters in Tenvinter, the other part of him argued (the lonely part, the mad, reckless part that wanted to hope against hope). Hawke wasn’t like anybody. He liked to pretend that he was merely a pleasant fool, to be counted on for quips and spells and little else, but Fenris had seen who he was when he thought no one else was looking. That man – not Hawke the Champion, but Garrett? There was a man worth knowing. Fenris wanted him, even as he despised himself for the wanting.

He hadn’t meant to act on the attraction. Planned on taking it to his grave, if he had to, since it stubbornly refused to fade like he hoped it might. But then came one hot, hazy, bitter night at the Hanged Man, summertime dripping all over Kirkwall, and Fenris had gone with the others to play Wicked Grace and dull his troubles with drink. Hawke had said something, Fenris couldn’t remember what now, but it had made him laugh. Hawke was the only person besides Isabela who could make him laugh. And then he’d looked and Hawke was looking back like he was the only one in the room, eyes burning.

Fenris had thought he knew what it meant to want, but not like _that;_ like being doused with ice and fire at the same time, like his skin was too small and he was going to claw his way out from the inside if he didn’t find some way to slake the feeling scorching through his veins. He couldn’t sleep for days afterwards, pacing around the mansion and breaking windows and bottles like a man possessed, desire filling his mouth, cloying and heavy on his tongue. How it was possible for anyone to feel like this about another and survive, he didn’t know. Maybe Hawke had bewitched him, and this was how he was destined to die, at the hands of the world’s sweetest curse.

On the seventh day, he went to the Amell Estate.

Bodahn let him in and had Sandal fetch Hawke, and then the man himself had come downstairs after a moment, smile wavering at the corners when he caught sight of Fenris’s face. He’d said something, maybe asked a question or two. Fenris couldn’t remember. He hadn’t come there to talk.

“I have been thinking of you.” He backed Hawke against the pillar, their foreheads almost touching. Hawke’s mouth was a hairsbreadth from his own. He was wearing rich clothing, sumptuous reds and purples and golds that glowed in the firelight. Fenris wanted to shred it off of him, piece by piece. “In fact, I have been able to think of little else.”

Hawke’s hands came up to rest on Fenris’s chest. He could feel the heat of them even through his armor.

“Must be something in the water."

He smiled crookedly. Fenris wanted to bite him. He wrapped his hand around the nape of Hawke’s neck, and watched Hawke’s eyes glaze over as he leaned into the touch.

“Command me to go,” he growled, “and I shall.”

“Did I say anything?” Hawke asked, and his arms wound around Fenris like vines. He was tangled up, drawn in, and Hawke’s eyes glittered like stars, like freedom, like everything beautiful the world had to offer all at once. He shuddered when Fenris grabbed his thighs and hoisted him like he weighed nothing, pressing him into stone warm from the summer heat, their cocks separated only by a few layers of leather and cloth; when Fenris leaned in, Hawke met his lips with a whisper that might have been a thank you, or a prayer.

They kissed the way lightning splits a tree, the way that waves in a storm pound the docks, and for a brief, infinitesimal speck of time, Fenris had everything he ever wanted.

*****

It wasn’t enough, because it was never enough. No matter where he went, Before always caught up with him eventually.

*****

“This freedom tastes like ashes,” he confessed to Hawke three years later, one forearm braced against the fireplace. It was summer, but the mansion remained bleak and cold, its ghosts peering out from rooms long unused. “Danarius is dead. Hadriana is dead. I am finally free, and yet… I feel nothing.”

“Ashes,” Hawke said thoughtfully. “I always heard it tasted like chicken.”

“Yes, that would be your answer, wouldn’t it?” Fenris said, glaring at him. “Everything’s a joke to you.”

“Revenge was poisoning you.” Hawke’s smile dropped, expression shifting from jovial to something decidedly less so. It was abrupt enough to make Fenris’s head spin. “I watched it eat you alive for six years. It’s a miracle there’s any of you left.”

“I know,” Fenris said, because he did.  “I thought if I was finally done running, if I finally laid it all to rest, then I could live as a free man does. But what kind of life is this?” The tips of his gauntleted fingers dug into his palm. “Any kind of past I had before Danarius died with my sister. At least, with him, I… I had a purpose. An enemy, yes, but a purpose. Now, I have nothing.”

“You have me,” Hawke said. Fenris looked at him sharply, and once more, found him looking back. His heart did something foreign in his chest.

“We never talked about what happened that night.”

Hawke shrugged. “You didn’t want to.”

 _I was a fool,_ Fenris wanted to say, as if he was any better now. As if he hadn’t spent every night since then torturing himself with the memory of something he’d had and lost, thinking he could never regain it. _I wanted you to hate me, so we could both move on._

“I thought it would be… better,” he managed, unable to tear his eyes from Hawke’s face. “If I left.”

“Was it?”

There was no judgment in Hawke’s voice, no reproach. Just the faintest stirrings of hope. Fenris shook his head. “No. It wasn’t.”

Last time they kissed, it had been violent and sudden, Hawke’s mouth bruised red as overripe fruit for days from teeth and fingers and tongue. Fenris’s cheeks and jaw had ached just as fiercely, rubbed raw from Hawke’s beard. Last time, Hawke was the storm; this time, he was the harbor, and when he put his arms around Fenris and drew him close, words like _safe_ and _home_ tangled in his throat and got him all choked up and he didn’t want to deal with it right then, so he just kissed Hawke again, longer this time. Eventually, they made it to the bed, but not before the expensive rug in front of the fireplace had been thoroughly defiled, along with the armchair, the desk, and the landing at the top of the stairs.

“I don’t think those stains are ever going to come out,” Hawke said, once he’d finally gotten his breath back.

Fenris tried not to smile. It was harder than it should have been. “I could just burn it all down. Everyone keeps telling me I need a fresh start.”

“Oh, excellent. You could stay with Merrill while we find you somewhere else to live,” Hawke said, and grinned. “You know how much she loves having company.”

Fenris hit him with a pillow.

Things were going to be different, he resolved that night, sitting at the window while Hawke slept face-down on top of the blankets, dead to the world. He was finally free, no longer running from the shadows of his past – free to look towards a new start, with Hawke by his side. Now that they were together, he had everything he could have ever wanted. It was going to be better, he told himself. He would _make_ it better.

But in some ways, it was so much worse.

*****

“I’ve been thinking,” Hawke said, somewhere between the first and second bottle of wine, and Fenris huffed a laugh into his cup.

“Sounds dangerous.”

“Only to me.”

The Hanged Man was never empty, but its atmosphere was somewhat subdued that night, and it was late; Hawke and Fenris were the only ones left at the table, everyone else either asleep or, in Isabela’s case, up to mischief elsewhere. Fire crackling across the room, the swell of hushed conversation in the background, and in their usual corner, Hawke unfolded his legs, stretching out beneath the table. His calf pressed against the line of Fenris’s leg, questioning, then retreated. He was still cautious about initiating physical contact – overly so at times, maybe, but Fenris liked that Hawke let him set the pace.

 _Maybe you just like having power over a mage,_ a voice in his head that sounded vaguely like Hadriana murmured, snide. He ignored it.

“Are you going to tell me what it is, or leave me in suspense?”

He was expecting something that would make him want to kiss Hawke and slap him upside the head in the same breath, as was customary, but Hawke’s smile faded just a touch, and anxiety unhinged its jaws. Even without an audience, Hawke was rarely serious. Maybe this was finally it. Maybe this was when Hawke finally told him it was all a mistake, that Fenris and his bad days and night terrors and broken-bottle edges were too much after all. His fingers tightened around his flagon.

“I want to know what you want,” Hawke said, drawing him back. The words took a second to register, and Fenris blinked, feeling like he'd missed something.

“What do you mean?”

Hawke scratched his beard, glancing away. Humans were so hairy, compared to elves. Fenris had always known that, but he’d never appreciated it until Hawke.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said again, not quite meeting Fenris’s eyes, “and I realized that I don’t really know. It seems like high time I asked.”

“I have everything I want,” Fenris said, confused, until Hawke’s hand slid to cover his own, warm and scarred.

“No, I mean… what you _want_.”

Oh.

_Oh._

Fenris stared dumbly at their entwined fingers, mouth gone dry. It was true that they’d never talked about the particulars of their infrequent intimacy, outside of the boundaries Fenris had set – _no penetration, no restraints, no magic._ Hawke stuck to them without question or complaint, which should have made him happy, but only made him more suspicious in his darkest moments. He supposed he was still waiting for the hammer to fall. Hawke shifted in his chair, wood creaking, and Fenris realized he was waiting on a response.

“I…”

His uncertainty must have shown on his face, because Hawke smiled and gave his fingers a light squeeze. “Now probably wasn’t the best time to bring it up. Forget I said anything.”

“Hawke.”

“If you need help with that last part, I can always put another bottle on Varric’s tab.”

He seemed like he was going to pull away, so Fenris caught his hand and held fast. “That’s what you’ve been thinking about? What I want?”

An unexpected heat enfolded him, tracing his spine with hungry fingers. He _liked_ knowing that Hawke thought about him when they were apart; it had never occurred to Fenris that he might.

“Almost always,” Hawke said blithely. “Preferably with me, but I’m flexible.”

Fenris really did smile this time. “In that regard, you have nothing to worry about.”

“And in other regards?”

Maybe it was the drink, or the weather, or just the challenge in Hawke’s voice, playful but direct. Maybe he thought the hammer just needed a nudge. Whatever the reason, Fenris found himself leaning in, cloaked by the familiar sounds of tavern life, and put his lips to Hawke’s ear.

“There are things I would be… amenable, to exploring.”

“Oh?” Only the long line of Hawke’s throat gave him away, bobbing as he swallowed.

 _Fuck it_. If it went badly, he could always blame it on the wine.

“I want to fuck you.”

They’d done a lot to make up for lost time, but never that. The thought of something inside him made Fenris retch, his entire body recoiling ( _don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t –_ ), and he’d assumed Hawke felt similarly. In Tevinter, a magister would never debase himself in such a fashion, let alone at the hands of an elf, and even though he knew Hawke was demonstrably Not Like That, the thought lay half-buried somewhere in his subconscious, ruining the idea before he could even entertain it. For a second, he wished he could snatch the words from the air and swallow them whole, but then Hawke’s lips parted and he made a noise Fenris had never heard him make before, looking like Andraste herself had descended from the ceiling of The Hanged Man to refill his cup.

“ _Maker_ , but that’s unfair.”

“What?”

Hawke shook himself a little and smiled ruefully. It put Fenris in mind of a dog emerging from the river. “You don’t have any idea what that voice of yours can do to a man, do you?”

Fenris had never given it much thought, but he put that tidbit aside to be examined later. He was more interested in other things right then, like the way Hawke’s skin flushed ruddy against his dark beard, eyes gone half-lidded and blurry with anticipation.

“You don’t mind the idea.”

Not a question, but a statement. Hawke snorted and slumped back in his chair, looking towards the ceiling. “He asks if I mind,” he said to no one in particular. “Yes, it’s a terrible burden, but I think I’ll manage.”

“You,” Fenris informed him, "are insufferable,” and Hawke threw his head back and laughed. The hungry gleam never left his eye.

“I don’t suppose you could be persuaded to suffer me a little longer?”

Fenris had the sudden and bizarre realization that he’d almost _wanted_ Hawke to refuse him. To be disgusted with him, even. It would have hurt, yes, but it would have been a clean break. Not like the creeping rot that spread through his veins a little more each day while he waited for something to go wrong. But then he thought about Hawke writhing beneath him on the bedsheets and a spike of lust drove through his chest, leaving him dizzy. He licked dry lips with an even drier tongue.

“That depends on how you intend to persuade me.”

Whatever he expected, it wasn’t Hawke taking his hand and guiding it beneath the table, between his thighs, where he was hard and straining against the softness of his robes. Fenris sucked in a breath, and Hawke pressed closer, his beard prickling at Fenris’s neck.

“I was thinking you could come over and fuck me, actually,” he said, voice low and a little slurred, and Fenris’s own cock twitched in response, half-hard where it was trapped against his thigh. “I don’t want to – if you don’t want to, tell me and I won’t push it. But don’t hold back just because you think you might drive me away. You couldn't if you tried."

“You don’t know that,” Fenris said, sharper than he meant to, and pulled his hand away. “You don’t know what all I want.” He was trying to be annoyed, but it was hard with Hawke nuzzling into him, half in his lap now like some kind of oversized pup.

“Then tell me.” A flash of teeth. “Or better yet, just show me.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying.” Fenris’s blood thrummed hot even as the words left him, lyrium pulsing through his skin. It hurt, it always hurt, but Hawke’s hand kneading slowly at his thigh was enough to distract him from the worst of it.

“Admittedly, most of what comes out of my mouth is shit,” he said, and there was that grin again. “But not this.”

“And what if I wanted to hurt you?”

Maybe he was the one who didn’t know what he was saying – it slipped out before he could stop it, and for a fleeting second, he nearly accused Hawke of using magic to loosen his tongue. But no, that wasn’t right, Hawke wouldn’t do that. _Breathe._ He dug his teeth into his lip.

Hawke’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly, but the smile didn’t waver. “It’s on the table.”

“But what if I – “

“Fenris.”

“I could – “

“Fenris,” Hawke said again, and dropped all pretense at silliness. The firelight turned his eyes black. “Anything you want, I’ll do it. All you ever have to do is ask.”

Fenris didn’t care for public displays, which was the only thing that stopped him from testing the boundaries of Hawke’s resolve right then and there, in full view of everyone in the tavern. Not that it would have mattered much – they’d seen worse. His hand dragged up the back of Hawke’s neck, kneading at the muscle there, and Hawke bit back a moan as Fenris’s fingers curled in his hair. He’d never met anyone who liked having their hair pulled as much as Hawke did, and he did it now, hard enough to land between threat and promise as he pressed their brows together.

“Do you mean it?” He growled the words on purpose, rolling them around on his tongue, and watched the way it made Hawke’s eyelids flutter, breath hitching. “Anything?”

Hawke had no such qualms about public displays. Hawke kissed him, biting hard enough to sting, and his answer lingered on Fenris’s tongue when he pulled away, the words poured from his lips like wine.

_Try me._

*****

Hightown was quiet. Hawke was not.

“Andraste’s sacred tits,” he gasped, like he wasn’t the one who’d said they should try to keep it down, for Sandal and Orana’s sakes. His broad back glistened in the candlelight, muscles rolling beneath skin already streaked red, angry scratches and bruises already beginning to flower. There was a perfect imprint of Fenris’s teeth on the back of his neck. His hair and beard glistened too, matted with sweat.

“You’ve been spending too much time with Isabela,” Fenris said, and shoved another finger inside him. Hawke bucked and swore, but his hands remained firmly lashed to the bedposts in front of him, keeping him tethered. Fenris had tied him so that his upper body was forced to lay flat against the mattress, leaving him propped on his knees with his ass in the air. A humiliating position for a man like Hawke, but he had yet to voice any objections; his cock hung heavy and red between his legs, a bead of precome dangling from his foreskin, and he shuddered when Fenris drove his fingers deeper still.

“Does it hurt?”

He twisted them this time when he pulled out, all the way to his fingertips, then slid them home, muscle clenching hot and helpless around him. Hawke nodded and panted, hips flexing like he couldn’t decide if he wanted more or not. He liked to talk during – unsurprising to anyone who’d known him for longer than thirty seconds – but not this time. They’d barely started and his words were already failing, giving way to incoherent oaths and groans.

“Good.”

 _Anything you want._ He wondered if he should feel guilty, taking advantage of Hawke’s trust in him like this. But there was no room for anything but _want_ , and the same terrible, possessive fervor he’d felt during their separation, when he would watch Hawke interact with the others and want to tear off the arm around his shoulders, break the hand resting on his chest. Maybe that was the reason Danarius had chosen him in the first place – not _him_ , but the bright, ugly thing inside him that wanted to sink its teeth into whatever it could take and never let go.

He shook it off, refocused. He didn’t want to think about Danarius, now or ever again. Not with Hawke splayed open so beautifully beneath him. He ran a covetous hand along the arch of Hawke’s spine, dragging his nails over slick skin, and was rewarded with a frustrated moan.

“How long are you planning to torment me?”

“For as long as I deem necessary,” Fenris told him. “You could have had your hands free, but you can’t be trusted to keep them to yourself.”

Hawke started to argue, but Fenris crooked his fingers, massaging in little circles, and watched the man dissolve into the bedclothes, boneless. Slow at first, then faster, rougher, working him until Hawke was yanking at his bonds and trying to slither away with his teeth bared, and Fenris pinned him down with his free arm and fucked him harder still, laying him open until Hawke’s moans changed into something pliant and liquid, desperation plain in every jerk and thrust of his hips against nothing.

“Fenris, please, come on, please, _please_ ,” he panted, every muscle in his body standing out in stark, trembling relief, and Fenris’s fingers slipped free with a noise that could only be described as obscene.

“Please what?”

“You know what!”

Hawke’s hair was a little damp, slick like silk in Fenris’s hand; he twisted it up and pulled, baring Hawke’s throat, and his own cock pulsed with vicious satisfaction at the way it made Hawke gasp, sucking air through his teeth. He draped himself over Hawke’s back, bit at the side of his neck. There would be bruises come morning.

“Say it.”

“Fuck me,” Hawke said, sounding dazed. “Maker’s breath, please, just…”

“That’ll do,” Fenris said, and went to untie his hands.

He’d considered toying with Hawke a bit longer – his cock was as big as the rest of him, and Fenris found the weight of it in his mouth unexpectedly pleasant – but a single stroke was enough to have him bucking into Fenris’s hands, biting his tongue to keep from crying out. Fenris let go, and Hawke scrabbled for him, reaching out in wordless protest.

Fenris slapped him.

It should have been too much. It was a momentary impulse, not fully-formed; even as his hand connected with Hawke’s cheek, he was sure he’d ruined the rest of the night. Hawke wasn’t supposed to fall in line, eyes blown black with his cock dripping all over the sheets, expression torn between wariness and naked lust. Hawke wasn’t supposed to _like_ it.

“Is that what you want?” He leaned close, almost looming, and he could _feel_ Hawke shudder without even touching him. “To be smacked and scolded like a dog? Treated like a thing, to be handled and used and put back on the shelf?”

The lyrium was beginning to burn silver-blue, stinging his skin, but Hawke’s eyes stayed trained on his face, lost to everything but Fenris.

“Yes,” he said, and there was no posturing, no jokes or resistance. Just eager, hopeless longing.

“Pathetic,” Fenris said, and ran a finger along the length of his cock, just to see him squirm. “Come here.”

When they were done, Hawke would heal himself, and Fenris would pretend it didn’t make him uncomfortable; there would be hot water, murmured praise and exhausted sleep. But not yet.

He gripped Hawke’s jaw, holding his mouth open while he kissed and bit indiscriminately, because he wanted to and he could, and Hawke let him, chest heaving, hands clenched obediently at his sides. He was aching to touch. Fenris knew this, and took no small amount of pleasure in denying him. He dragged his nails down Hawke’s sides, ran them through the hair blanketing his chest and thighs, pinched his nipples – aimless touches, with no other purpose than to tease and torment, studiously avoiding his cock until Hawke was down to the last tenuous threads of his self-control, making wounded noises and grinding against nothing. Then, he shoved Hawke down onto the bed. From behind would have been an easier position on both of them, he supposed, but he didn’t want easy. He wanted to see Hawke’s face while he took him apart.

There was the initial resistance, despite Fenris’s earlier work – it had been a long time for both of them. But he stroked Hawke a little more, slicking his thumb across the head, and Hawke _melted,_ impossibly hot around Fenris as he slid home, his hips flush against Hawke’s ass. It took everything he had to wait for Hawke to adjust, the silence in the room only broken by ragged breathing.

 _Mine,_ some dark, animal part of his mind whispered, and his first thrust made Hawke grab for the bedposts, driving a guttural sound from deep in his chest. He tried to grab Fenris’s shoulders on the second, legs wrapping around Fenris’s waist, only to get smacked again for his trouble. “Hold onto the bedframe. Don’t make me tell you again.”

“Tell me again anyway,” Hawke said, breathless. This time, when Fenris slapped him, it was more deliberate, and his eyes rolled back for a second, the black fringe of his eyelashes feathering his cheekbones. The noise he made went straight down Fenris’s spine to his aching cock.

It couldn’t last forever, but Fenris did his best to prolong it – if it never happened again, he would have every inch of that night committed to memory, the night when Hawke belonged completely and selfishly to him alone. _Belonged,_ yes, because it wasn’t the kind of belonging that happened in Tevinter, it was a belonging that was freely given – _insisted_ upon – a belonging not of the body, but of the soul. He buried his face where Hawke’s neck met his shoulder and listened to Hawke’s heartbeat while he fucked him, to the broken, greedy, joyous noises spilling from his throat. _He likes being treated like this. You’re giving him what he wants._

He was focusing so hard on not coming, his orgasm a continuous, coiled threat low in his belly, that he didn’t even notice his skin starting to burn again, the markings flaring white-hot. He dug his fingertips into Hawke’s thighs, rhythm stuttering as pain and pleasure crashed into him, over him, shaking and panting, and then Hawke’s hands curled around his shoulders and magic washed over him like a cool breeze, leeching away some of the pain.

Later, when he thought back on it, Fenris wouldn’t be able to pinpoint the exact moment it happened. One minute, pain was fighting pleasure for dominant sensation; the next, it had eased, and his hands were locked around Hawke’s throat, squeezing –

No, not Hawke, _Danarius_ , Danarius who shifted to Hadriana who blurred into Varania and back again –

Not Hawke, but some unknown mage, and then he looked again and it was Hawke again, Hawke with his face all pink, sweat dripping down his temples and his lips parted in ecstasy, and Fenris’s arms trembled and Hawke’s back arched and he came, silent, painting his chest and stomach with stripes of white. Fenris’s grip on his throat eased, then fell away, and he came too, waves of monstrous pleasure sweeping him out to sea.

*****

Hightown was quiet. Fenris couldn’t stand it.

He lay rigid in bed, eyes burning sightlessly in the dark. It would be morning soon, and he had yet to sleep. Next to him, Hawke snored, naked and sated. His back and sides were a tableau of welts, bite marks littering his shoulders. It made Fenris sick to look at them. There was just as much poison in him as there had ever been.

Hawke rolled over, sheets tangled around his waist. His mouth was bruised, just like the first time they’d lain together. There were already marks on his neck from Fenris’s hands, little clusters of black and blue like flowers.

Fenris didn’t bother with the door when he left. Not when the window worked just as well.

*****

Avoiding Hawke was easier said than done. For one thing, there was nowhere to go; for another, he _ached._ How was it possible, to be in the same place as someone and feel their absence as keenly as a phantom limb?

“Not that it’s any of my business,” Varric said, when he and Aveline came by a few days later, “but I hear talking about your problems is supposed to help. Not to me, obviously, but… you know. Someone.”

“You’re right,” Fenris said. “It isn’t any of your business.”

“What’s his name again?” Varric tapped his chin and made a show of appealing to the vaulted ceilings. “Big, bearded, only person who can get you to stop brooding for more than five seconds? It’s on the tip of my tongue…”

“Varric.”

“Hm?”

“Get out.”

He left, whistling, and Aveline stood in the doorway – hovering, Fenris might have said if it were someone else, but Aveline wasn’t the sort of person who hovered. Loomed, maybe.

“Hawke isn’t stupid,” she said. “Even if he likes people to think he is.”

“I’m aware,” Fenris said, hand braced on the doorframe. He and Aveline understood each other, liked each other, even, the way you come to like familiar things, but right then he needed her gone. “What’s your point?”

“ _Talk to him_.”

Fenris shut the door in her face.

*****

“I liked it, you know.”

Grey, unforgiving water drizzled from the clouds above, great dark swells obscuring the long stretch of sea to the north, and Fenris shaded his brow to keep the rain from his eyes. It had been a week since they’d last seen each other. There were times, infrequent though they were, where Fenris needed space after their intimacy had wrung him out, and he would retreat to his old squatter’s nest for a day or so to regain himself, but this was different. He supposed it could be considered craven of him, to force Hawke to seek him out, but he couldn’t bring himself to do anything else, just like the first time. Years gone by, and there he was, standing still.

“I could have killed you,” he said.

“You could have killed me well before that,” Hawke said, then paused, like maybe the _my-lover-is-a-living-weapon_ road wasn’t one he wanted to tread that day. “Fenris, you’ve known me for six years. If anything, wanting you to choke me is one of my safer pastimes.” Fenris didn’t respond, and Hawke changed the subject, tilting his head to look up at the encroaching storm. “Really, though, brooding by the docks in the rain? That’s a bit too on the nose, even for you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I was here well before it started raining.”

Hawke laughed. He sounded tired. Even without turning around, Fenris could picture his expression, dark circles under his eyes and his smile all crooked. “Come home. Talk to me. Or yell at me, if you want. Break things, even. I saved all my empty wine bottles for you.”

“More jokes,” said Fenris, because he was tired too. “No. I have no desire to break your things, or your home. Not even as a joke.”

“Our home.”

At first, Fenris thought it was the rain.

“What?”

“ _Our_ home,” Hawke said, without a hint of hesitation in his voice. “If you want it to be.”

“Are you mad?” Hawke’s neck was the first thing he saw when he turned around, bruises faded to dull purple ringed with yellow, and Fenris jabbed a finger at him, hunched and spitting. “I do that to you, treat you like… like a _thing_ , and you ask me to move in?”

“Ask you to move in?” Hawke’s eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled – how was he still smiling? – teeth bright against the dark of his beard. “I can’t sleep more than two hours at a time when you’re not in my bed, Orana asks after you constantly, and breakfast always ends up burnt. When you don’t come home, it rains. It’s already yours.”

Fenris didn’t say anything for a long moment, partly because his mouth picked that moment to quit working altogether and partly because his eyes were prickling with what was most definitely just rain, and it took several deep breaths to regain his composure. Then he said, “ _Festis bei umo canavarum_ ,” and turned away, pacing the length of the dock.

“That’s an awfully roundabout way of saying yes.”

“It means, ‘you will be the death of me’,” Fenris snapped, turning back towards him. “Do you have any idea what really happened? What I – what I almost did to you?”

“I might if you actually talked to me about it, instead of vaulting out my window in the dead of night like someone lit you on fire.”

“When you touched the markings, I thought you were him,” Fenris said, and Hawke fell silent, leaving only the insistent patter of the rain on wood. “No… before then, even.” He put his hand up to keep Hawke from speaking, cold water dripping down the back of his neck from his sodden hair. “When I was hurting you, it was like I was hurting one of them. I wanted to humiliate them, make it so they were powerless like I once was. I knew it was you, at my core, but there was a part of me…” He trailed off, shook his head. “You’re not like him, you know. Even your magic is different. It _feels_ different.”

“Would you still have done it?” Hawke asked. “If I hadn’t asked for it?”

“No. Never.”

“And if I’d asked you to stop?”

Fenris wanted to say yes, wanted to say it so badly it made his mouth hurt, but he kept remembering his hands around Hawke’s throat. He stayed silent, and Hawke was quiet too for the moment, examining him.

“What if I asked you to do it again?”

“That’s not funny, Hawke.”

“I’m not joking.” Hawke raked wet hair out of his eyes. “Just like I wasn’t joking that I told you I’d do anything you wanted. Or about wanting you to stay with me, or being in love with you, or any of it.” He stopped, swallowing, and pressed on. “I don’t joke about you, Fenris. Not like that.”

“I just told you that I was taking out my anger on you! That I was treating you how I longed for someone to treat Danarius and Hadriana and the rest! How can you even – “

“So take it out on me,” Hawke said, and in three long strides he was there, rough hand cupping Fenris’s cheek, eyes searching his, his body solid and warm even though his clothes were soaked. “You don’t belong to anyone, but sometimes…” He hesitated, thumb stroking along Fenris’s cheekbone. “Sometimes I want to belong to you. Not because anyone’s forcing me, but because it feels right. Maybe that's wrong, I don't know, or maybe you don't want that, and that's alright. I can live with that. But I already told you, you can't scare me off. I'm yours.” The corner of his mouth quirked up. "Like it or not."

Fenris stood stiff and uncertain against him, caught between running and melting into his arms. Eventually, the second option won out. It always did.

“You really are mad,” he muttered, face buried in Hawke’s neck where his pulse beat steady like a war drum, calling him home.

“I’d wager that’s been well-established,” Hawke said, and kissed him.

“I’ll only hurt you,” Fenris tried, resolve already crumbling.

“I like it.”

“Hawke – “

“I trust you,” Hawke said, and kissed him again, deeper this time. And maybe he was a fool, maybe they were both fools for trying to build a home on a foundation of sand, but Fenris couldn’t find it in himself to mind just then. Not with Hawke’s heart beating in time with his, and his big arms wrapped around Fenris like a lighthouse, a lifeline, an anchor, in defiance of the waves.

*****

The rain went from drizzle to sleet, the horizon tinted green, and Fenris let himself be coaxed back to the estate. It was wet out, he reasoned, and cold for early summer. If he wanted to, he could always leave. The thought startled him, and he sat with it in the foyer while Bodahn ran him a bath and Hawke tried to get Sandal to stop swinging from the chandelier. He _could_ leave. Hawke wouldn’t stop him. He might not like it, but he wouldn’t stand in Fenris’s way. He never did.

Bodahn came down to inform them that the bath was ready, and Hawke passed Sandal-wrangling duty off to him and took Fenris upstairs. “Can I bathe with you? Or would you rather be alone?”

“Alone. For now.”

Hawke nodded, as if he’d expected it, and left Fenris to it. The bath was scented, and fragrant steam rose from the water’s surface. Fenris stripped and submerged himself to his chin, skin prickling with heat. Water sloshed over the sides of the basin. He stayed until the water went from lukewarm to cool, then to cold. When he finally dragged himself out of the bathroom, Hawke was already sprawled across the bed, flipping through a book. He sat up as soon as he saw Fenris, setting it aside. “Feeling better?”

Fenris nodded and sat on the foot of the bed, stifling a yawn. It was barely evening, but the weather made it feel later, and he was tired. Hawke looked at him for a second, then patted the spot next to him on the bed, higher up. “Come here.”

“I just realized,” Fenris said as he scooted up, and yawned again, properly this time. “You haven’t made a joke the entire time I’ve been here. It’s beginning to concern me.”

“Terribly sorry.” Hawke’s arm wrapped around his chest, and a solid bulk settled against Fenris’s back, beard tickling his ear. “I’ll make it up to you.”

“See that you do.”

 _Stay,_ came the whisper as he drifted off, and Fenris decided he was going to give Hawke a piece of his mind in the morning. That wasn’t funny at all.

*****

He never remembered the dreams. Just the way they made him feel.

They didn’t come all the time – he could go months without having one, only to have them creep back in half a year later with sharp smiles and long fingers, trying to drag him back into the viscous swamp that made up his memories of Tevinter. _Little wolf,_ they called him while it sucked him further into darkness, struggling all the way down.

When he surged up into consciousness, he was curled on his side, breath all caught up in his chest and his skin streaked with fear-sweat, and a hand smoothed over his shoulder blades, rubbing small circles. “It’s okay,” Hawke said, voice thick with sleep. “S’okay. You’re here.”

Fenris jerked away, and all the air in his lungs came out in great, shuddering gulps, body shaking. Hawke didn’t try to touch him again, just murmured soothing nonsense, and Fenris wanted to be angry with him because it was easier than being angry with nothing, but it helped. Hawke’s voice made him feel calmer. Safe, even, pathetic as that felt. Eventually most of the shaking stopped, and when the terror receded and his breathing slowed, he heard rain drumming against the windowpane. It was still dark out, the moon completely obscured by billowing clouds. He had no idea how long he’d been asleep.

“You’re okay,” Hawke said again. It sounded like he was telling himself more than Fenris. “Do you need anything?”

Fenris didn’t really have it in him to say anything, so he ended up taking Hawke’s arm and draping it over himself, hoping he’d take the hint. Sometimes, afterwards, he couldn’t stand to be touched; other times, it helped ground him. Hawke didn’t push it, just sort of scooted closer and nosed the back of his neck, where the lyrium marks stopped. It was, like most things Hawke did, oddly comforting.

The rain beat down on the roof at a steady pace, its patter underlaid by Hawke’s heavy breathing. Fenris watched it trickle down the windowpane until his vision blurred and the sounds combined into one, so much crashing surf on a distant shore. He closed his eyes and hoped he didn’t dream.

*****

Another thing Fenris liked about Hawke: beneath the veil of bravado and endless witticisms, there was a good heart, and a generous nature.

 _Very_ generous.

Hawke’s beard rubbed against him – his thighs, his ass, the sensitive skin behind his balls – and he exhaled into the pillow, shifting his hips. It always made him sore when they did this, the beard, but he liked it. Liked the reminder in the way his flesh ached for the rest of the day, tender where his armor pressed into him. But mostly, he liked it in contrast to the soft heat of Hawke’s tongue, licking him open with slow, lazy strokes, like they had all the time in the world.

The rain had gone through the night, but it was softer now, the outside world hidden by pearly-grey mist. A perfect morning to stay indoors, Hawke had said, and Fenris wasn’t inclined to argue with him. Not when he was trying to avoid coming all over the sheets. He bit his tongue and shifted again, fabric dragging across his swollen cock, and Hawke’s hands kept his legs apart, thumb tracing the curve where his thigh met his ass.

“Perfect,” he said, so quiet Fenris almost couldn’t hear him, and bit lightly at the inside of Fenris’s thigh, nuzzling into him. "Do you have any idea how beautiful you are right now?"

Fenris arched towards Hawke in a silent plea, and the groan that slipped his throat when Hawke’s tongue found him again had Hawke wrapping his arms under Fenris’s hips and pulling him flush against his mouth. He worked a little faster now, sloppy in his enthusiasm, lapping and sucking indiscriminately, and Fenris pressed his forehead against the mattress and tried to remember how to breathe. He felt Hawke pull back a little, breathing hard, and then he did something with his tongue that made Fenris’s entire body light up like a bonfire, punching a low moan out of him.

“Keep doing that,” he said as soon as he remembered how to form words, and Hawke did.

Time fell away – there was only him, and Hawke’s hands and mouth and the endless rhythm of the rain. He could barely move, could barely _think_ with the pleasure washing over him, leaving him pliant and boneless in their wake. Hawke cupped his ass, kissed his skin, spread him open so he could bury his face deeper still, and Fenris had never known he might like this, but he never wanted it to stop, even as the rest of him ached for release.

He ground himself against Hawke’s tongue, hips flexing, toes curling, breathing hard through his nose; one of those big hands finally, _finally_ wrapped around his cock and stroked him, warm and sure. The relief was instantaneous. He dug his fingers into the sheets and hung on for dear life. Hawke palmed the head of his cock, skin slick against skin, and Fenris’s back arched of its own accord. He kissed Fenris like he would kiss his mouth, working him faster, and there it was, anticipation building sweet and low in his belly. He chased after it mindlessly, panting with each erratic thrust into Hawke’s fist, and Hawke let him, making rough noises of encouragement into Fenris’s skin.

When he came, his orgasm was slow, pulsing through him until he shook, eyes rolling back in his head, and Hawke stroked him with fingers and tongue until he twisted away, gasping, “Enough, enough…” And then he was left to collapse onto the bed, wrung out while Hawke kissed his sweaty back and flanks and held him like he was something worth holding onto.

They cleaned up as much as they could be bothered, Fenris wiping the worst of it from his skin and discarding the sheets while Hawke was in the bathroom rinsing his mouth. Then he collapsed on the bedclothes, head buzzing pleasantly and his body light. Hawke came back a moment later, and they laid shoulder to shoulder, staring at the ceiling.

“Wonder how long it’s going to rain.”

“Mm,” said Fenris, only half-listening. “Do you want me to…?”

“Later, maybe,” Hawke said. Even in profile, he looked entirely too pleased with himself. Then again, Fenris thought, they could agree that he’d earned it. He rolled onto his side, his arm thrown over Hawke’s waist, and Hawke’s arm curved around his shoulders in turn, keeping him close. “If you want.”

Fenris smiled a little at that, unable to help himself. With Hawke, _wanting_ was never the issue. Hawke glanced at him, eyebrows raised. “What?”

“Nothing,” Fenris said, tightening his grip. He buried his face in Hawke’s neck and for the moment, he let himself forget, and just breathed.


End file.
